Elisabeth Gräb-Schmidt gives a paper on 'Religion and rationality – transcendence and freedom: About the anthropological and cultural key role of religion'

The research project will look into the reformulation of issues of normativity against the backdrop of Kant´s critique of Metaphysics. In the wake of this turn, it is no longer the general but the individual that informs the search of normativity. In this search, certainty („Gewissheit“) plays a crucial role as pursued by Luther as the specific experience of conscience and as being further developed by Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard in their debate on theoretical and critical aspects of modern subjectivity. In this context, individuality reveals itself as singularity, consolidated through a religious experience originating from a reference to transcendence. These reflections are part of a major project on ethics, aiming to establish normativity on legitimate grounds (ethics of „new realism“).